Display racks having one or multiple display ladders are widely used in retail shops and departments stores to display merchandise such as clothing, toys, and food. FIG. 1 is a semi-schematic isometric drawing of a prior-art ladder style display rack. Ladder style display racks, such as that shown in FIG. 1, are generally designed to be used with hangrail brackets 11 and shelf brackets (not shown). These hangrail brackets 11 and shelf brackets (not shown) engage the individual ladder steps 2 and provide extensions (similar to a shelf or an arm) to which hangers and folded clothing may be hung or spread out for display.
There are several disadvantages with the illustrated prior art display rack 1. Among other things, the prior art display rack includes a welded upper rack portion 3 and a welded lower base portion 4. The welded upper portion 3 includes ladders 5 joined together by a plurality of lateral support bars 6. Because the joints between the lateral support bars 6 and the ladders 5 are welded, the upper portion 3 may be often quite large and heavy depending on the number of ladders used.
The base portion 4 may similarly be imposing to an individual handling and shipping the rack assembly 1. The base portion 4 includes two end stabilizer bars 7 joined together by a cross-bar 8. The end stabilizer bars 7 are usually also equipped with casters 9. Thus, packaging and finding available couriers to transport the prior art rack system 1 may be burdensome.
Another deficiency with the illustrated prior art display rack 1 is that the welded joints between the stabilizer bars 7 and the ladders 5 may sometime crack or break due to the overall weight of the rack system 1. In addition, due to the reasons discussed above, the rack system 1 may overall be heavy and difficult to manipulate. Furthermore, each configuration of the ladder rack system (i.e., a single ladder rack, a two ladder rack, a three ladder rack, and on occasions, a four ladder rack) requires separate inventory and production. This may be both expensive to produce and more difficult to minimize inventory. Among other things, several production procedures may be required for different rack configurations, making production more costly. Also, predicting which rack configuration to store may not be easy since the configuration that a customer is most likely to order may generally not be predicted. This may lead to the production and storage of multiple rack system with different configurations.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a modular display rack that is easily modifiable into different configurations. Such a modular display rack should, to the extent possible, be easier to assemble and disassemble then the display racks in the prior art.